Book Review: "Deadly Curiosities" by Gail Z. Martin

“Deadly Curiosities” is the first book in a new series by author Gail Z. Martin, published by Solaris Books. Set in Charleston, a city with a long and rich history, it features haunted places and objects, demons, shadow creatures and a vampire. If that sounds like your kind of thing, then let me tell you more about it!

I never read a book by Gail Z. Martin before, so when I was offered a review copy of her latest book, “Deadly Curiosities”, I went strictly by the summary: Trifles & Folly is an antique store in Charleston, South Carolina, where two young people with psychic powers (and their vampire associate…) acquire and neutralize supernatural objects. I kind of thought about the backroom full of haunted, creepy items, from the movie “The Conjuring” and figured, yeah, this might be a good read. Was I right?

First, let’s talk a bit about the characters and the plot. The book’s protagonist, Cassidy Kincaide, is a young girl continuing the family business – the Trifles & Folly shop. As far as most people are concerned, it’s your average antique shop, but it actually serves as a place where our heroes gather (they usually just buy them off of people) items that are haunted or have some other supernatural attributes. Cassidy is a psychometric, which means she can touch an object and immediately learn it’s entire history, as well as identify whether it’s haunted or not.

Cassidy works with Teag, a young guy who also has some sort of magic. You see, he is a Weaver. What does that mean? Well, it’s never really explained well, which is a problem, but it’s sort of like he has magic research powers. He can get on the internet, find places there that are unavailable to your regular internet users, and get all the info he can. So he basically has supernatural Googling abilities, I guess.

Closing our trio, is the OTHER Trifles & Folly partner, the mysterious and moody 500-year old Belgian vampire, Sorren (not really a Belgian name, but maybe he moved there), who is also a master thief. Other than helping Cassidy and Teag with really powerful objects, he’s also their connection to the Alliance – a shadowy group of supernaturally gifted individuals, who spend their time averting all sorts of magical threats to the world.

One day, the de-powered objects Trifles and Folly sold to a B&B, suddenly get powered up again, releasing all sorts of ghosts, demons, what have you. Homeless people start being brutally murdered in the city, and the two events seem to be connected. Turns out the man behind it is, long thought dead sorcerer, Corban Moran, who now has a demon doing his bidding. And that’s basically all you need to know about the story.

I always try to find something positive to say about things I’m reviewing, but to be frank, I didn’t enjoy this book at all. I think a big part of that is that, as a 29-year old man, I’m just not the target audience here. The last decade has shown us that there’s a big market for emo vampire beefcakes, so I’m sure there will be many female readers digging the hell out of Sorren. Me, I was interested in the haunted stuff, the horror, and the premise of a repository for creepy items. I did something I don’t usually do before writing my reviews and checked what others thought about this book, and it seems that women (the vast majority of its reviewers) generally liked it. Well, here’s why I didn’t.

First off, the pace of this book is very slow. There’s plenty of recurring moments where we follow Cassidy from her home, where she plays with her beloved dog, to the shop, where things are mostly uneventful, to her lunch break where she goes to the market to talk with her other shop-owner friends, and asks them how business is going. I realize all of that sort of serves to give you an idea about the city, the atmosphere of Charleston etc, but it’s not done very effectively. I recently reviewed “The Axeman’s Jazz” by Ray Celestin, and it was a perfect example of making a city come to life. Here, we are told about the city, about its residents, but I felt nothing.

Once the shop closes, Cassidy and Teag usually go out to further their investigation into the dead homeless people and the sorcerer and his demon. They are not a very effective team, as for most of the book, each of these excursions accomplishes very little, and our heroes are back at the shop, beaten and bruised, getting ready for another day of retail work, visiting markets, buying coffee and another evening investigation. This goes on for at least 2/3rds of the book’s 372 pages, and it manages to kill my interest and make me actively dislike the heroes.

You see, we are frequently told how bad things are, how some of the dead homeless men were friends of the Trifles and Folly crew, and how urgent this situation is, how bad it needs fixing. If it’s so urgent, you’d think maybe skipping an uneventful work day (at a business our heroes own), a few lattes and chuckling and grinning while visiting the marketplace, would be a good idea and possibly save a few homeless dudes from being skinned and gutted. When things are this dire, going about with your daily routines all willy nilly, doesn’t help make the characters and the book charming, it makes me think they are awful slackers, who are bad at their job.

I didn’t find the characters themselves likeable or relatable. Cassidy doesn’t really have a personality that could be easily defined, which is pretty bad, considering how much time we spend with her. She is quite bland, and the relationships with her co-workers (her gay friend Teag and the frequently melancholic vampire Sorren) don’t do anything to help define her. Teag is alright, I guess, even if, like Cassidy, he seems to be more concerned with his daily routines and dates with his lawyer boyfriend than saving any lives. Sorren is a sad vampire, not of the Lugosi type, more of the “Twilight” type, and that’s really all there is to him. You’d think being around for over 500 years would help build character.

This leaves us with the spooky stuff, the reason I was interested in the book in the first place. Whenever Cassidy touches a haunted object, she sees all kinds of stuff. Generally not very scary stuff (“A woman hanged herself here!”, “People died here!”, “There was a fire and a lot of people died here!”). There were no moments in this book where things got at least a little bit creepy, which is a shame, because I really like the idea of a shop storing all kinds of haunted objects. There’s massive potential there, and as far as I’m concerned, it’s not realized.

So no, I didn’t enjoy the book. I know that there’s a lot of people that enjoyed “Deadly Curiosities”, and I think a lot of people may get stuff out of this book that I just couldn’t, but that doesn’t change the fact that I personally didn’t like it. I think it’s a missed opportunity. I think the characters could have been better (You know who this gang really could use? A cynical character, to tell them when it’s not a good time to enjoy a coffee or a stroll through Charleston, to ridicule Teag’s Google powers, to add some humor to the book and be somebody for the characters to play off of), the pace could have been much improved, and the horror could be scary. As it is, “Deadly Curiosities” just wasn’t for me.

"Deadly Curiosities" comes out June 24th, from Solaris Books.Are you planning to read "Deadly Curiosities" despite Editor's grumpy review? Are you a fan of Gail Z. Martin? Let us know in the comments!